I have lived here for decades. The trash, streets and lawlessness of drivers has reached a breaking point.
I’m here to bitch and complain with a proposal that will certainly be controversial for most St. Louisans…the premise of blowing up city services and trying something new. St. Louisans tend to be averse to new thought, I know this well, as a non-native. They like the old way of doing things.
Unions, cronies, pals, orange trucks, that kind of stuff. It is indeed old school and charming on some levels. But we have to change. It no longer works. We have to compete with our neighboring suburban cities and big cities outside the region.
The city departments are failing us. And, the price of living here is only going up. Especially if you live in a “hot” neighborhood or one that many like and want to live in, your property taxes are skyrocketing. Yet, the services don’t come close to matching the rate increases.
The politicians don’t really seem to care either. The latest phase seems to be a trend toward social issues and justice issues, but not so much on the basics. The former are incredibly important and will help us make meaningful change that we need. But, St. Louis will not be able to compete with our neighbors as a place to live a normal life if things are falling apart around you.
The horrible services and lack of order and normalcy is changing the way I view voting and living and spending my money.
Everyone I talk to is fed up with city services. The streets are horrible. The parks are shoddily maintained. The alleys look horrible. The dumping is out of control. The refuse department quit on us. The police, whom we pay more per capita than most American cities, have turned a blind eye to the normal stuff.
Know, the police are in a tough spot. I don’t ever expect police to stop crime, I just expect them to react and help people when needed and enforce the basics of normal living.
Again, our taxes are rising. Maybe not everywhere, but in the desirable neighborhoods, we are paying up at levels that are tough to swallow. The assessor is on the scene.
But hey, I don’t mind taxes when these important funds help others and aim toward good public services.
Well, that ain’t the case here friends. We don’t have good city services. They are sometimes charming and small town-neat with interactions with people and employees and stuff. But by no means is it working for the whole.
We need rapid, drastic change. Not the kind of change that one politician can bring. This is a crony city. You have to be more connected than talented/driven to run a city department.
We need a tough, bureaucratic city planner, who isn’t concerned with politics and will run a tight ship. Or, at least a ship that doesn’t constantly have holes in the hull.
The old families/people that continue to run us into the ground keep getting elected. Here’s the thing, they talk a strong game of self preservation or sustenance, but don’t do anything meaningful for the masse. They self-serve and advance their careers and personal lot, but they don’t have the will to make the tough decisions: firing people that can’t get the job done. Advocating for common sense.
Listening, building a plan for change and measuring success, not with consultants, but rather a drive-by assessment of life in the city.
Let’s start with refuse. The trash situation is a joke. Our yard waste gets picked up maybe once every 3-4 months. My bill has never gone down by the way. Recylcing? maybe, maybe not. Dumpsters are trashed, have holes in the bottom, lids that don’t close.
The city will tell you: report it to CSB. I quit doing that. It is negative energy. It works maybe 10% of the time.
The refuse drivers dump the overflowing trash all over the alley and keep on driving. They are behind. The block the alleys with the dumpsters and keep on truckin’.
Hiring is tough these days. COVID fucked things up. Whatever excuse/narrative you prefer, set it aside for a minute and ask if our neighbors immediately outside St. Louis are doing this. Are they experiencing the same dysfunction?
Well, that’s exactly what I did.
I asked three suburbanites in the County what their trash situation has been during the pandemic and how it compared before and after. Years ago, I was under the impression that you could hire whatever trash service you wanted in the burbs. This troubled me in that there is a lot of waste in that model, but you at least have choices as a consumer.
I asked each person about their situation, cost and experience.
Here’s what they said:
Sample 1: located in unincorporated South County near Lindbergh and I-55: “The County assigns trash haulers to certain regions. We have Republic. So no choice. Prices increased in February, but with yard waste (which is and extra $13 a month), I think it comes out to around $30 a month. No disruptions during Covid.”
Sample 2: Maplewood, MO, a small city that abuts St. Louis to the west: “No choices. City wide contract (read Maplewood, not STL City). Service is free unless you want yard waste collection. No interruption in service during pandemic that I can remember. I think we have Allied, who of course is the proprietor of the under ground burning landfill.”
The cost is built into your property taxes. Interesting, maybe this is the model to follow. We pay extra above our property/sales/city tax. I’ll get to that in a moment.
Sample 3: unincorporated South County near DuBowl (only landmark I can think of) where many of the vast majority of Bosnian-Americans moved after coming to St. Louis: “There is a large contract with the providers. We pay quarterly, but it comes out to ~$30/month. We have Republic Services. Yard waste, trash and recycling are included. For yard waste, you have to provide your own receptacle (paper or trash can).”
Now, city wide or countywide trash contracts are another opportunity for payoffs, cronyism and all the negatives of working on government contracts. But, as you can see, it works. They have had no disruptions in service to date.
It ranges from part of your property taxes and no extra bill to ~$30/month.
What is St. Louis like? Our trash is lumped in with our water bill, and I do online billing, so I had to find a paper bill to see what we pay.
We live in a single-unit building, and our bill is $42 for 3 months, or $14/month. This is about half of what suburban cities/areas pay. But, we have terrible service. It is $14/month/unit, so the price goes up for multi-family units.
I for one would gladly pay $30/month to have functional trash service. And the model of a city-run department is not something I would pay 2X for. It would have to be accountable at the contract level. If some company fails, you find someone new. This is how it works in most of life. If you don’t like your Ford, you buy a Toyota. If you don’t like driving to the burbs to buy stuff at Wal-Mart, have it delivered to your home from Amazon, etc. Get bad service at Schnucks, move to the one down the road. This is the way of the consumer-focused world we live in.
The refuse, parks, streets, police, etc. are not working for the average citizen.
Think I’m a privileged, high falootin’ white South Sider? Nah, I spend lots of time all over the city, north to south, east to west. North City is in shambles when it comes to street trees, infrastructure, refuse and anything else.
I’ve chosen not to share the photos I’ve taken of this crisis because I feel it just feeds the low self-esteem, “we can’t have nice things” mentality. Trust me, I’m an optimist/booster, yet, this is code red, as is the lack of enforcement on horrible, unlicensed/untaxed drivers, pot holes and lack of trees in North City.
It isn’t working. It won’t work the way it is.
Don’t pour money into the status quo, cut it loose. Contract it out.
The union, pension, entrenched will attack me for this. I’m sure I’ll be called insensitive or a shameless capitalist. I can take it.
It’s time to get the basics covered. It is time to try something new. It is time to vote for people who understand that city services are important. I can move across the street from Skinker, McCausland or any other street on the edge of St. Louis and have all my problems solved.
We need to be competitive on the basics.
Please.
